El Salvador: Volume 1: Crisis, Coup and Uprising 1970-1983

By David Francois

A severe social and political crisis in El Salvador during politicians, religious figures and activists through strikes but organized the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) and launched an armed insurrection against the government in early 1981.

Within months, the FMLN established itself in control over two departments – which it was to guerrilla’s support base in the countryside. Although bombardments, strafing, shelling, summary execution of anybody captured, and massacres of civilians became the norm of the day, the FMLN continued growing in strength and by 1983, reached the peak of its power and control over the countryside.

El Salvador, Volume 1: Crisis, Coup and Uprising 1970-1983 – is the first inclusive and incisive military history of this incredibly vicious, merciless war: one of two major conflicts fought in Central America during the 1980s within the context of the Cold War. Based on official documentation and carefully cross-referenced secondary sources, it is lavishly illustrated with original photographs and custom-drawn color profiles and is an indispensable single-point source of reference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Release date: Mar 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781804514023

David Francois

David Francois, from France, earned his PhD in Contemporary History at the University of Burgundy and specialised in studying militant communism, its military history and relationship between politics and violence in contemporary history. In 2009, he co-authored the Guide des archives de l’Internationale communiste published by the French National Archives and the Maison des sciences de l’Homme in Dijon. He is regularly contributing articles for various French military history magazines and regular contributor to the French history website L’autre côté de la colline.

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INTRODUCTION

During the 1980s, El Salvador received disproportionate attention given the modest size of its territory and population. The scene of a civil war between Left and Right, the ideological conflict in this small Central American republic has featured political actors from all over the world willing to engage in one way or another, in the socio-political drama that Salvadorans were experiencing and which was part of the global struggle between communism and capitalism.

Yet the history of El Salvador has been shaped by violence from the day the Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado gave his name to this small Central American country, up until the gang wars that ravage this country today. The political, social and economic violence, which accelerated during the 1970s, culminating in a civil war in the early 1980s, was the real trigger and engine of a conflict that lasted more than 12 years. It was also part of a Latin America that was not stingy with armed conflicts after 1945 and the one that affected El Salvador in the 1980s as an echo of the revolutionary cycle inaugurated in Cuba in 1959.

Nevertheless, the Salvadoran conflict had some singularities that distinguish it from those that struck Latin America during the Cold War. In the words of Charles E. Spencer, El Salvador saw ‘the best militarily developed insurgent movement in the history of the American continent’.¹ This was in a country that all military specialists considered unsuitable for guerrilla warfare. The Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front or FMLN) simply failed to survive for many long years; it almost won and, if it failed to win, it was not defeated by arms, despite Washington’s support for the Salvadoran government.

This was a new peculiarity of the Salvadoran conflict. If, unlike the Sandinista guerrillas, the FMLN did not seize power by force, it was because of the scale of the American intervention, which resulted in both massive economic and military aid and the application methods of counter-insurgency warfare in a small country hitherto ignored by the American superpower.

Resulting from an internal crisis, the Salvadoran conflict appeared as the acme of a form of war which punctuated the history of the twentieth century; called revolutionary or popular war by one camp and counter-insurgency war by the other camp. The FMLN was based on the military experiences of the revolutionary movement combining insurrection, urban guerrilla warfare and a protracted people’s war whilst the Americans implemented strategies resulting from the experience of the British in Malaysia, the French in Indochina and Algeria and their intervention in Vietnam.

If Salvadoran civil war – which broke out when the Cold War was revived following the election of Ronald Reagan and ended when the USSR no longer existed and the Cold War had become a closed chapter in history – was therefore rich for the study of military history, it should nevertheless not make us forget that it caused the death of more than 70,000 people, or 1.4 percent of the population of El Salvador.

1

EL SALVADOR FROM SPANISH CONQUEST TO THE DAWN OF CIVIL WAR

El Salvador appears on a map of Central America as a small state bordering the Pacific Ocean, sandwiched between Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the north and east. It is separated from Nicaragua only by a narrow strip of land of 25 kilometres, outlet of Honduras on the Pacific in the Gulf of Fonseca. Three large geographical areas characterise this country, a narrow plain that runs along almost the entire Pacific coast, dominated by a volcanic chain crossing its heart and extended by an area of high rugged mountains inside the territory to the border north with Honduras.

The tropical climate and volcanic soil make El Salvador fertile ground for coffee plantations, the country’s main source of wealth for a century and a half, which cover vast areas of steep volcanic slopes. At the end of the twentieth century, the coastal plain increased its economic importance when the government cleared land for cattle grazing and the cultivation of cotton and sugar cane. The mountains of the north-east, meanwhile, are populated by poor farmers living on the margins of economic life. Nevertheless, the main division of the country results from the presence of one of the largest rivers in Central America, the Lempa River, which crosses El Salvador from north to south. The two large bridges built over this river during the twentieth century serve as fragile links between two different regions since the eastern part of the country, which is more rural, is less economically developed.

Demographically, in 1980, with approximately 5 million inhabitants in a territory of 21,393km², El Salvador was the most densely populated country in Latin America with 226 inhabitants per square kilometre. Unlike other regions of this continent, its population was homogeneous, made up of 90 percent Métis, nine percent White and one percent Native Americans (Amerindians) who did not distinguish any striking cultural differences.

From Colonisation to Independence

It is this geographically contrasting territory that Spanish ships, coming from Panama, discovered in 1522. Two years later, troops coming from New Spain, present-day Mexico, commanded by Pedro de Alvarado, embarked on the conquest of Central America. In June 1524, the first Spaniards reached a territory called Cuzcatlán by the native inhabitants and which Alvarado renamed San Salvador, ‘the Holy Saviour’, in reference to Jesus Christ. The Spaniards encountered strong resistance which forced them to retreat to Guatemala and they needed two military campaigns in 1525 and 1528 to defeat the Amerindians. The conquistadores were quickly followed by civilians who settled in localities that would become the largest cities in the country, San Salvador created in 1525, San Miguel in 1530 and Trinidad in 1533.

Spaniards did not settle in an empty country. The Amerindian population, which they called the Pipiles, was linked, by language and culture, to the Aztec civilisation of Mexico. The Pipiles, who developed an agricultural and merchant society, built cities and roads and possessed a written language, fiercely opposed the Europeans. Thus, it took nearly 15 years for the Conquistadors to control the country.

Faced with the impossibility of extracting precious metals that were almost non-existent in El Salvador, the Spaniards opted for the exploitation of the only possible resource, the ground. After their victory, they established their administration and offered land to settlers who were cultivated by the Pipiles and subjected to forced labour. Colonial society thus developed an export economy of agricultural products, notably cocoa and indigo, whilst the Amerindians were decimated by disease. To ensure the functioning of this economic system based on forced labour, militias were founded to suppress possible indigenous rebellions, collected taxes and ensured the permanence and obedience of the workforce.¹

As in all of Latin America, the colonial system began to crumble in the early nineteenth century as Spain’s power declined. In 1811, there was a first uprising in El Salvador demanding autonomy, but it was violently suppressed. Three years later a new revolt inaugurated a war of independence that lasted nearly seven years. On 15 September 1821, the colonies of the General Captaincy of Guatemala declared their independence from Spain. Faced with the attempts of Agustín de Iturbide, the ruler of Mexico, to annex the former colonies of Central America to his country, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica unified within the United Provinces of Central America in 1823.² This year saw also the birth of the Salvadoran Army, formed by the union of several cavalry corps fighting against Mexican attacks.

Divided between Conservatives and Liberals, the United Provinces gradually disintegrated under the pressure of constant struggles. Finally, the five states abandoned their efforts to unite, and each declared their independence, which El Salvador did in January 1841. Independence did not put an end to the problems facing the country, in particular poverty and discrimination against the natives. In 1833, the Nonualcos, Amerindian populations living around Zacatecoluca and San Vicente, revolted under the leadership of Aquino and reinforcements were needed to restore order and prevent the rebels from controlling the whole country.³

In the years following the Nonualco rebellion, a new export culture emerged in El Salvador. As early as 1840, high-quality coffee was produced profitably on the volcanic slopes of the country. In 1864, whilst the value of coffee production exceeded the decline in indigo revenues, large amounts of land still remained in the hands of indigenous communities who practised food crops on small plots under communal control. For the government, obsessed with the need to increase coffee production, this situation represented an obstacle to progress. In 1881 and 1882, the Legislative Assembly passed a series of laws abolishing communal land tenure and establishing mechanisms for allocating such land to anyone who would use it for growing coffee and other export crops. It was at this time that a small group of large landowners formed. The integration of El Salvador into the world economy through coffee production allowed the consolidation of this oligarchy of producers who gradually gained political power, in particular through the financial support they provided to the government. This allowed them to impose laws governing daily labour in agriculture and prohibiting the organisation of agricultural workers. Coffee culture became the basis of economic and political power.⁴

The conquest of Central America by the Spaniards was particularly brutal and encountered resistance from the local populations. It thus took several years for the Conquistadors to conquer the territory of present-day El Salvador. (Author’s Collection)

The grip of the coffee producers on the government also had consequences in the military field. Unlike the rest of the region, the Salvadorans had a disciplined army in the mid-nineteenth century made up of infantry, cavalry and artillery. Under pressure from the coffee oligarchy, these Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador (El Salvador Armed Forces or FAES) provided less defence against an external enemy than internal security against the frequent revolts of indigenous peasants. In return, the oligarchy protected the interests of the military and guaranteed the expansion of the FAES. They created also, in 1912, the Guardia Nacional (National Guard or GN) to ensure the security of the coffee plantations and suppress peasant protests.⁵

The development of coffee production in the nineteenth century profoundly transformed El Salvador, giving it the political, economic and social features that it retained until the 1980s. The large landowners were the real holders of power and imposed their will on a harshly exploited landless peasantry. (Author’s Collection)

El Salvador experienced a period of political stability during the years 1870–1927, essentially marked by the absence of change in the unequal social structure and the liberal policy of the country.

The Presidency of Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez

In 1927, Pio Romero Bosque was elected president of El Salvador. Considering the growth of popular organisations throughout the 1920s, he sought to integrate them into the political game. For this, he promised holding free elections and criticised the systematic repression of workers.⁶ This democratic opening quickly came up against the crisis of 1929 which hit the Salvadoran economy hard. Thus, between 1928 and 1931, the international price of coffee fell by 54 percent.⁷ Food supplies, which depended on imports due to the expansion of coffee monoculture, were tight. The coffee oligarchy reacted by drastically reducing the wages of workers, many of whom found themselves unemployed. Craftsmen went bankrupt and civil servants also saw their wages drop.⁸

Politically, the presidential elections of 1931 were the first free elections in El Salvador. They were won by Arturo Araujo who was supported by a coalition of students, labour activists and landowners stricken by the Great Depression.⁹ However, these elections came as discontent grew in a country reeling from the global economic crisis. From 1928, the influence of the communists increased sharply in western El Salvador, especially among peasants and rural workers hit by falling wages who launched strikes in 1931 and moved closer to the Partido Comunista Salvadoreño (Salvadoran Communist Party or PCS), founded in 1930 and led by Agustín Farabundo Marti.¹⁰

Although President Araujo began by suppressing workers’ and peasants’ demonstrations, he remained faithful to his reformist strategy and proposed to authorise the participation of the PCS in the municipal elections of December 1931. This concession caused the discontent of the oligarchy and to a greater extent, the FAES. Araujo was overthrown in a coup on 2 December 1931 and his former vice president and Minister of War, General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, took power.¹¹

Augustin Farabundo Marti Rodriguez was a revolutionary who at the end of the 1920s was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League of Americas where he met the Nicaraguan Augusto Sandino. He joined the PCS and became one of the leaders. He was sentenced to death and executed after the failure of the 1932 uprising and became a martyr for the Left movement. (Author’s Collection)

For their part, the communists organised the workers and peasants who demanded the return of the communal lands confiscated from the Amerindians and the 8 hour working day for all workers. Martinez’s refusal to let the elected communists sit in the municipalities where they were elected, added to the deterioration of the economic situation and pushed the PCS to prepare an insurrection. However, the authorities were made aware of this plan and arrested Marti. The poorly planned Izalcó peasant uprising, which began on 22 January 1932, was a rout for the coffee workers who were crushed by government troops in just three days. Between 8,000 and 10,000 people were massacred, the vast majority being indigenous peasants.¹² Salvadorans called this episode the Matanza, a stronger term than massacre which reflected the collective trauma it caused. The peasant unions were dissolved and Marti and other communist leaders were shot, becoming the figureheads and martyrs of the Salvadoran revolutionary movement.

With his seizure of power by a coup in December 1931 and the massacre of communist insurgents in 1932, General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez inaugurated 50 years of military power in El Salvador. (Author’s Collection)

With the Matanza and the coming to power of General Martinez, the link between the landed elite and the FAES was reinforced and sealed the nature of the regime for the years to come, based on the shared fear of a new communist revolt. From 1931 and for half a century, the military, supported by the oligarchy, remained in power through repression, electoral fraud and coups. Thus, during the period 1931–1970, eight of the nine presidents of the country were soldiers. The sole civilian president ruled only four months until replaced by military.¹³

Martinez ruled the country through repression, forcing the opposition into exile or underground. He moved quickly to consolidate his power and put in place economic reforms which, together with the wage cuts imposed after the Matanza, ensured the survival of the coffee oligarchy. Nevertheless, he also initiated social reforms in favour of the poor, such as the establishment of a social security system or the recognition of trade unions, with the aim of avoiding uprisings like that of 1932.¹⁴

Martinez ended up angering the oligarchy when he tried to raise export taxes and showed his desire to stay in power after 1944, again breaking the Constitution. Although a coup attempt against him failed, growing discontent and a general strike eventually forced him to resign on 8 May 1944. His successor, General Andrés Ignacio Menéndez was overthrown after 5 months in power to be replaced by the Director of the Policia Nacional (National Police or PN), Colonel Osmin Aguirre y Salinas. He ruled the country until the elections of January 1945 which saw the victory of General Salvador Castañeda Castro, however, on 14 December 1948, when he illegally tried to extend his term, Castañeda was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by young reformist soldiers.¹⁵

Between Military Dictatorship and Economic Growth

The 1948 coup marked a new stage in the evolution of the place of the FAES in the life of El Salvador. The latter declared they wanted to establish a democratic regime where citizens could freely choose their leaders. This desire changed the perception that the population had of the FAES, which were beginning to be considered as the guardians of law enforcement and national sovereignty and not as a private army at the service of the oligarchy.¹⁶ However, the FAES, which governed the country until the elections of March 1950, always avoided challenging the power of this oligarchy and initiating fundamental reforms. In 1949, a law even banned Left-wing parties whilst, to consolidate their power, the military created their own Party, the Partido Revolucionario de Unificacion Democratica (Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification or PRUD).¹⁷

Major Oscar Osorio was the PRUD presidential candidate in 1950 and won the elections. He initiated a modernising project that wanted to make the FAES both the guarantors of change and the guardians of the new aspirations of society. A new Constitution was promulgated in 1950 which gave a new role to the State, that of promoting national development and ensuring social well-being. The government’s desire for reform nevertheless had its limits as during the 1956 presidential elections, the PRUD candidate, Lieutenant Colonel José Maria Lemus, obtained 93 percent of the votes in elections rigged by soldiers who monitored the ballots and the vote count. Nonetheless, despite these electoral frauds, the PRUD expressed the will of the FAES to promote a new elite in the shadow of a State which wished to free itself from the tutelage of the oligarchy.¹⁸

A further drop in export coffee prices and the enactment of an electoral law that prevented the existence of an opposition, quickly undermined the weak popularity of Lemus’s government. For its part, the influence of the Cuban Revolution stimulated the organisation of several demonstrations calling for the resignation of the president and the establishment of a democratic system. The government responded by stepping up repression, banning free speech and imprisoning any political dissidents. For the oligarchy, economic development was not possible in such an environment whilst the nascent middle class felt threatened and the FAES were no longer willing to support such an authoritarian president.¹⁹

A coup overthrew Lemus on 26 October 1960. The new civil-military Junta that took power included Fabio Castillo, a professor who sympathised with the Cuban Revolution. His presence convinced the economic elite and the most conservative military, that the government was influenced by communism. Once again, the FAES overthrew the Junta on 25 January 1961. This Coup